This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.
Emmett, Joshua are now cattle ranchers, seeking a quiet change in career for various reasons. They’re driving buggalo from Emerald City to the Porcelain Citadel. Currently they’re on top of a mysterious shiny dome in the desert, trying to get to the delicious1 treasure inside
Story
Emmett and Joshua carefully open the top of the chromium dome, which has a soft spot at its exact top. From inside they hear muttering. Looking inside, a golem is on a perpetual patrol surrounded by crates of, well, anything. It is not obviously intelligent, merely repeating its current objective “guarding, protecting, defending, attacking”.
The pair decide to lasso a couple of crates and drag them up to the ceiling to look through them. The golem is pretty unhappy about it, but can’t get to them at all. They leave the dome with their mysterious winnings: a ceramic cylinder of flashing lights, and a sack’s worth of pale white tokens.
On returning to Potsherd, random people appear to take an interest in their return, rushing off. Sure enough, they are collected by some armed guards who are very polite but firm about wishing them to talk to one of the princes.
This turns out to be High Fire 3-body, who was the one they charmed to enter the city a week back. He’s got some irregularities in his paperwork and was just hoping they could clear up with their recollections. Just a few questions2 about their entrance, who was before, who was after? All very friendly, thanks for the help.
Joshua and Emmett are unfussed and go to the college of Potsherd in the hope someone can help identify what they’ve found. Alice Verte has a look - she’s uninterested by the white chips, they’re just discs of ivory or something. The cylinder though is a rather nice energy container from the Old Times. Probably worth something to the right buyer.
They return to Amalgamated Steeds and Vehicles. Hazel’s not thrilled about the attention she’s getting. She doesn’t want to give them the autogolem here, it’s too showy. Joshua doesn’t like this delay to being paid, but Emmett sees the attraction of being more innocuous.
They agree to leave separately and meet at the Last Serai, west of here.
Tools
Unchanged.
Lessons learned
A note rather than a lesson, the player of Zalephona can’t make it any more, so she’s been faded out.
We’ve shortened the sessions to two hours, turns out they were still a bit long for a school night.